Team Characteristics and Practices: A Brief Primer

1. Team Characteristics and Practices: A Brief Primer

2. Why Service Learning? • To help you synthesize and understand the themes of the course • To engage in active learning • To help you learn problem solving skills • To make strides towards solving real problems • And…

3. Because lecture and exam format teaches you that: • Passive acceptance is a more desirable response to ideas than active criticism. • Discovering knowledge is beyond your power and is none of your business. • Recall is the highest form of intellectual achievement, and the collection of unrelated “facts” is the goal of education. • The voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgment. • Your own ideas and those of your classmates are inconsequential. • There is always a single, unambiguous Right Answer to a question.

4. What is expected from you? • Enthusiasm for the project you choose • To produce something that meets the needs of your sponsor, integrates the themes of the course, and teaches you to apply theory to practice, and test theory

5. Self managed work team is a group that has responsibility to: • Manage themselves (plan, organize control, staff, monitor) • Manage their interactions with others (Glen, sponsor, me, etc.) • Assign jobs to members (decides on who works on what, where and when) • Plan and schedule work (start up and completion, work pace, goal setting) • Take action on problems

6. Behavioral expectation • Take responsibility for your work outcomes • Monitor your own performance, continuously seek feedback • Manage your performance, and initiate corrective actions • Actively seek guidance, help and resources from Glen, me, sponsors • Take initiatives to help other people improve their performance

7. Characteristics of Successful Teams • Clear goals • Appropriate leadership • Organizational support • Suitable tasks • Accountability and rewards

8. Norm Issues for Team Meetings • Decisions– how to make them? Consensus? Veto power? • Attendance– what’s a legitimate reason for missing a meeting? How to encourage attendance? • Assignments– what do you do when someone does not complete one, or does a poor job? • Participation– how can you encourage everyone to participate

9. Meeting times– When? How often? How long? • Agenda and minutes– Who’s responsible? What other roles need to be assigned? • Promptness • Conversational courtesies • Enforcement

10. Task Behaviors • Initiator/contribute • Information giver • Information seeker • Opinion giver • Opinion seeker • Coordinator • Energizer • Evaluator/critic

11. Social Behaviors • Encourager • Harmonizer • Compromiser • Expediter • Standard setter • Follower • Group process observer

12. Project Steps • Contract (this week) • Set up meeting with Glenn • Statement of Problem, initial research (Oct 3) • Lit review • Identify data source • Write up brief history as it pertains to Vermont • Determine focus (October 10) • One page overview of deliverable • Methodology (draft work plan) October 10 • List of interviewees (October 17) • Interview questions (October 24) • Interviews and summaries (November 7) • Presentation • Peer evaluation

13. Project teams